Finally have a more deliberate transition from the trees to the inside wall. The scrolling speeds on the background will change to be more accurate.
I'd still be tempted to bring back some of the "3D-ness" to Green Hill Zone's ground rather than having those diamond-shaped tiles. Compared to Marble Zone and Spring Yard, which both look rather lovely, it's a bit... flat. Maybe an awkward thing to program though, in terms of generating scenery on the fly.
Good point - This is exactly why I haven't. I have a system in place for generating random things over the stage geometry, like the leaves in Wood zone or the panels in Spring Yard zone. Both of these things are allowed to be slightly outside of the geometry, so I dont have to check too much I only need to check a couple locations that are inside or outside of the shape to decide whether to place it there, but there's no fast way to check/force a rectangle or any shape to be completely inside a shape like GHZ would need that I know of. It's slow enough to generate a large SYZ terrain shape (which I am working on), but yeah, too much of a challenge. Best I could do is just put the 3D things in the chunk texture itself, but then it'd look weird at edges. This is part of a bigger issue, there are some zones which I simply cant include due to the challenges of making them look right. Such as Casino Night (really wanted it but the surface of the terrain is completely transparent and generating that from a shape would be a nightmare. I could just remove that but then it's just casino street from S4 lol) and Mystic Cave (it's not even solid, it's just poles with ragged cave material all over it, would be impossible to generate this in a decent looking way (and fast!) without taking some considerable time to look into entirely new methods for all this. Only got limited time to work on this of course and there are far more pressing issues than figuring all that out haha.
If only Sega and Sonic team could be as creative as the fans. This is the kind of game that the suits at Sega need to look at and try to make.
Robotnik! Sonic 1, then middle is the last seen attempt I did, and to the right is the finished egg. Also here's a tweet showing Tails and Marble and some info about background scrolling https://twitter.com/LapperDev/status/1376873304460509184
Looking good, Eggman! I'm not sure how I feel about the Tails sprite. I get what you were going for, but his head/face/nose feels rather narrow which combined with his body makes it feel like he's only occupying the back 2/3rds of his hitbox, as opposed to Sonic whose sprite set is quite evenly balanced.
I do get this feedback a lot which is why I hardly ever show Tails, I haven't had the chance to fully go through and fix him (or knux) up yet but here's a preview of some changes, He's 1px wider here than in the video among some other things.
Why merely push a boulder, when you can do this? So this is controlled in a way that is quite challenging, as you move to the side the boulder begins to roll, and you have to keep moving to keep yourself balanced on either side to keep it rolling or turn it! Kinda like spinning logs in SM64 or Yoshis Island Boulder You can of course push it but if it rolls away from you ...that's that
I have a question regarding how the ground generates the graphics for Marble Zone in particular. In the original game, the land above (with the green background) had grass and slopes, whereas the ground below (with the cave background) was all blocky and had no grass. I can see in one of your videos that you have this in place, somewhat, but I cannot see how this works, unless the person developing the level defines where this line is, and then the generation of the land changes to accommodate this. So, how does this work? If it's too complicated to explain, that's fine, but I am curious as to how you approached this.
It's just automatic, the background scrolls exactly how it would in the original game so the line is fixed - it just automatically places grass on floors high enough. Also, much like you can in any zone, you can make any surface specific rather than automatic if you want.
Great to see support for tubes in level layouts - this will be great for allowing Zones like Chemical Plant/Stardust Speedway/Launch Base etc. to be created within Studio! Liking your take on the former in the second screenshot - the subtle corrosion on some of the metal is a nice touch. = ) Re: the Green Hill screenshot - have you considered styling the tubes as logs rather than with the checkerboard pattern when using this level theme? It'd provide a little more visual variety (akin to Chemical Plant or Launch Base, where the tubes and the main floor have different, contrasting appearances) and would tie in nicely with the turning spiked logs which could be encountered in the original version of the Zone.
Thanks for the suggestion, I do agree. I may want to make it less plain or samey at the very least. It's an issue for another day though, adding a ton of stuff lately.
Damn, that's righteous. Curious to see what kinda levels he might make himself! Great work as always.
New update: https://twitter.com/SonicStudioProj/status/1462163812296048645 "You can save your poor clicking hand from adding thousands of shape nodes for lush zones... In Sonic Studio, grass bumps automatically along terrain edges! (the exact look/execution of this is subject to change)"